Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe presents a novel account of the origins of religious pluralism in Europe. Combining comparative historical analysis with contentious political analysis, it surveys six clusters of increasingly destructive religious wars between 1529 and 1651, analyzes the diverse settlements that brought these wars to an end, and describes the complex religious peace that emerged from two centuries of experimentation in accommodating religious differences. Rejecting the older authoritarian interpretations of the age of religious wars, the author uses traditional documentary sources as well as photographic evidence to show how a broad range Europeans - from authoritative elites to a colorful array of religious 'dissenters' - replaced the cultural 'unity and purity' of late-medieval Christendom with a variable and durable pattern of religious diversity, deeply embedded in political, legal, and cultural institutions.

The most devastating attacks against the Jews of medieval Christian Europe took place during the riots that erupted, in 1391 and 1392, in the lands of Castile and Aragon. For ten horrific months, hundreds if not thousands of Jews were killed, numerous Jewish institutions destroyed, and many Jews forcibly converted to Christianity. Benjamin R. Gampel explores why the famed convivencia of medieval Iberian society - in which Christians, Muslims and Jews seemingly lived together in relative harmony - was conspicuously absent. Using extensive archival evidence, this critical volume explores the social, religious, political, and economic tensions at play in each affected town. The relationships, biographies and personal dispositions of the royal family are explored to understand why monarchic authority failed to protect the Jews during these violent months. Gampel's extensive study is essential for scholars and graduate students of medieval Iberian and Jewish history.

Every day, men and women risk their lives to stop violence in religiously charged conflicts around the world. You may not know their names - but you should. Peacemakers in Action, Volume 2 provides a window into the triumphs, risks, failures, and lessons learned of eight remarkable, religiously motivated peacemakers including: * A Methodist bishop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who confronts armed warlords on his front lawn * A Christian who travels to Syria to coordinate medical aid and rebuild postwar communities * A Muslim woman, not knowing how Kabul's imams will react, arrives to train them on how to treat women - respectfully. Volume 2 offers students of religious and grassroots peacebuilding informative techniques and methods for organizing community action, establishing trust in conflict, and instilling hope amid turmoil. The book also features updates of case studies presented in Volume 1.

This book traces the global, national, and local origins of the conflict between Muslims and Jews in France, challenging the belief that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. Maud Mandel shows how the conflict in fact emerged from processes internal to French society itself even as it was shaped by affairs elsewhere, particularly in North Africa during the era of decolonization. Mandel examines moments in which conflicts between Muslims and Jews became a matter of concern to French police, the media, and an array of self-appointed spokesmen from both communities: Israel's War of Independence in 1948, France's decolonization of North Africa, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1968 student riots, and Francois Mitterrand's experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s. She takes an in-depth, on-the-ground look at interethnic relations in Marseille, which is home to the country's largest Muslim and Jewish populations outside of Paris. She reveals how Muslims and Jews in France have related to each other in diverse ways throughout this history--as former residents of French North Africa, as immigrants competing for limited resources, as employers and employees, as victims of racist aggression, as religious minorities in a secularizing state, and as French citizens. In Muslims and Jews in France, Mandel traces the way these multiple, complex interactions have been overshadowed and obscured by a reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.

Women's role in crusades and crusading examined through a close investigation of the narratives in which they appear. Narratives of crusading have often been overlooked as a source for the history of women because of their focus on martial events, and perceptions about women inhibiting the recruitment and progress of crusading armies. Yet women consistently appeared in the histories of crusade and settlement, performing a variety of roles. While some were vilified as "useless mouths" or prostitutes, others undertook menial tasks for the army, went on crusade with retinuesof their own knights, and rose to political prominence in the Levant and and the West. This book compares perceptions of women from a wide range of historical narratives including those eyewitness accounts, lay histories andmonastic chronicles that pertained to major crusade expeditions and the settler society in the Holy Land. It addresses how authors used events involving women and stereotypes based on gender, family role, and social status in writing their histories: how they blended historia and fabula, speculated on women's motivations, and occasionally granted them a literary voice in order to connect with their audience, impart moral advice, and justify the crusade ideal. Dr NATASHA R. HODGSON teaches at Nottingham Trent University.

Between Court and Confessional explores the lives of Spanish inquisitors, closely examining the careers and writings of five sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors. Kimberly Lynn considers what shaped particular inquisitors, what kinds of official experience each accumulated, and to what ends each directed his acquired knowledge and experience. The case studies examine the complex interplay of careerism and ideological commitments evident in inquisitorial activities. Whereas many studies of the Spanish Inquisition tend to depict inquisitors as faceless and interchangeable, Lynn probes the lives of individual inquisitors to show how inquisitors' operations in their social, political, religious and intellectual worlds set the Inquisition in motion. By focusing on specific individuals, this study explains how the theory and regulations of the Inquisition were rooted in local conditions, particular disputes and individual experiences.

Why "the Muslim question" is really about the West and its own anxieties-not Islam In this fearless, original book, Anne Norton demolishes the notion that there is a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues, is the West's commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the most fundamental sense, the Muslim question is about the values not of Islamic, but of Western, civilization.

"More than any other recent book, this work sets out with absolute clarity and sometimes uncomfortable honesty the intolerable reality of life for Christians in the Middle East today ...a deeply intelligent picture of the situation, without cheap polemic or axe-grinding, this is a very important survey indeed."--Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University In 2013, alarmed by scant attention paid to the hardships endured by the 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories on a quest to learn more about their fate. He found an oppressed minority, constantly under threat of death and humiliation, increasingly desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope that their situation will improve, or anyone will come to their aid. Wivel spoke with priests whose churches have been burned, citizens who feel like strangers in their own countries, and entire communities whose only hope for survival may be fleeing into exile. With the increase of religious violence in the past few years, this book is a prescient and unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, why have we not done more to protect these people? Klaus Wivel is a Danish journalist who has been the New York correspondent for Weekendavisen, one of Denmark's most prestigious newspapers. He has written on a wide range of topics, with a focus on the Middle East.

In various parts of the Islamic world over the past decades virulent attacks have targeted Islamic funeral and sacral architecture. Rather than being random acts of vandalism, these are associated with the idea of performing one's religious duty as attested to in the Salafi/Wahhabi tradition and texts. Graves, shrines and tombs are regarded by some Muslims as having the potential to tempt a believer to polytheism. Hence the duty to level the graves to the ground (taswiyat al-qubur). In illuminating the ideology behind these acts, this book explains the current destruction of graves in the Islamic world and traces the ideological sources of iconoclasm in their historical perspective, from medieval theological and legal debates to contemporary Islamist movements including ISIS.

Why did the medieval Church bless Duke William of Normandy's invasion of Christian England in 1066, and authorize cultural genocide in Provence? How could a Western Christian army sack Christian Constantinople in 1204? Why did thousands of ordinary men, and women too, led by knights and ladies, kings and queens, embark on campaigns of fanatical conquest in the world of Islam?;Contemporaries did not call the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 'The First Crusade', nor the heroic contest between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, the 'Third Crusade' - the word had not yet been invented. But the idea of a war for the faith had been around for many years. Why it started, when, and what was the reality of 'The Crusades' are some of the questions this book aims to answer.;Many people saw the Crusades as pilgrimages, many believed they were doing the will of God, and many more were there for the booty. This was an institution that for more than five centuries punctuated European history, troubled Christian consciences and embittered Muslim attitudes towards the West. Geoffrey Hindley takes us from the Middle East and Muslim Spain to the pagan Baltic when 'Crusaders' reclaimed or extended Europe'

The Knights Templar, part monastic order, part military force, lived by a firm code, or rule, which exists in differing versions. This Spanish version is a follow-up to J.M. Upton-Ward's highly successful edition of the French Rule. The introduction to this Catalan Rule, Barcelona Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Cartes Reales, MS 3344, discusses the content, language and dating of the manuscript. It also provides background information derived from the French Rule (which the reader may require for a fuller appreciation of the text - see author note below) on the circumstances of the Knights Templar. There is a brief description of the provincial organisation of the Order with particular reference to the houses in Aragon, where it is most likely that the manuscript was used; a summary of clauses; and a concordance with de Curzon's 1886 edition of the French Rule. Compared to de Curzon's edition, the Barcelona text is incomplete, but it contains important clauses not found in other manuscripts. A partial transcription claiming to represent all the clauses without equivalents in de Curzon's edition was published in 1889, but it omitted several clauses now published here for the first time. Footnotes to the English translation elucidate the text; give biographical information on the named officers of the Order where possible; and indicate significant differences compared with the French Rule. J. M. UPTON-WARD edited and translated The Rule of the Templars (Boydell & Brewer 1998), now available in paperback.

In the United States, people are deeply divided along lines of race, class, political party, gender, sexuality, and religion. Many believe that historical grievances must eventually be left behind in the interest of progress toward a more just and unified society. But too much in American history is unforgivable and cannot be forgotten. How then can we imagine a way to live together that does not expect people to let go of their entrenched resentments? Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion offers an innovative argument for the power of playfulness in popular culture to make our capacity for coexistence imaginable. Jeffrey Israel explores how people from different backgrounds can pursue justice together, even as they play with their divisive grudges, prejudices, and desires in their cultural lives. Israel calls on us to distinguish between what belongs in a raucous "domain of play" and what belongs in the domain of the political. He builds on the thought of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum to defend the liberal tradition against challenges posed by Frantz Fanon from the left and Leo Strauss from the right. In provocative readings of Lenny Bruce's stand-up comedy, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, and Norman Lear's All in the Family, Israel argues that postwar Jewish American popular culture offers potent and fruitful examples of playing with fraught emotions. Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion is a powerful vision of what it means to live with others without forgiving or forgetting.

How should historians read sources which record inquisitorial trials in the Middle Ages? How can we understand the fears felt by those on trial? By analysing six volumes of depositions in the trial of Cathar and Waldensian heretics in Languedoc between the late twelfth and the fourteenth century, in this 2009 book, Caterina Bruschi challenges old methodologies in the study of dissent. She examines the intrinsic narratological problems related to the sources and, using approaches from the social sciences, analyses the different fears felt by deponents and how those fears affected their actions and decisions. In so doing, she sheds light on itinerancy within the ecclesial structure of non-conformist movements and contextualises the problem of itinerancy as a benchmark for the definition of heresy. Focusing on the lives and attitudes of trial witnesses, this innovative account is a major contribution to our understanding of the nature of religious non-conformity in the Middle Ages.

From fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto and living underground to fighting for social justice in 1960s' Seattle and helping smash the communist system in 1980s' Poland, this is a narrative that erupts into critical moments in Jewish, Polish, and American history. It is also a story of the hidden anguish that accompanies and courses through that history, of the living haunted by the dead. The story is told through a conversation, often contentious, between Michael Steinlauf, historian of Polish-Jewish culture and child of Holocaust survivors, and the anthropologist and artist Elzbieta Janicka. It is illustrated with scores of photographs and documents.

To allow or restrict hate speech is a hotly debated issue in many societies. While the right to freedom of speech is fundamental to liberal democracies, most countries have accepted that hate speech causes significant harm and ought to be regulated. Richard Moon examines the application of hate speech laws when religion is either the source or target of such speech. Moon describes the various legal restrictions on hate speech, religious insult, and blasphemy in Canada, Europe and elsewhere, and uses cases from different jurisdictions to illustrate the particular challenges raised by religious hate speech. The issues addressed are highly topical: speech that attacks religious communities, specifically anti-Muslim rhetoric, and hateful speech that is based on religious doctrine or scripture, such as anti-gay speech. The book draws on a rich understanding of freedom of expression, the harms of hate speech, and the role of religion in public life.

Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia is one of the first single-author comparisons of different South Asian states around the theme of religious conflict. Based on new research and syntheses of the literature on 'communalism', it argues that religious conflict in this region in the modern period was never simply based on sectarian or theological differences or the clash of civilizations. Instead, the book proposes that the connection between religious radicalism and everyday violence relates to the actual (and perceived) weaknesses of political and state structures. For some, religious and ethnic mobilisation has provided a means of protest, where representative institutions failed. For others, it became a method of dealing with an uncertain political and economic future. For many it has no concrete or deliberate function, but has effectively upheld social stability, paternalism and local power, in the face of globalisation and the growing aspirations of the region's most underprivileged citizens.

The Idea of Semitic Monotheism examines some major aspects of the scholarly study of religion in the long nineteenth century-from the Enlightenment to the First World War. It aims to understand the new status of Judaism and Islam in the formative period of the new discipline. Guy G. Stroumsa focuses on the concept of Semitic monotheism, a concept developed by Ernest Renan around the mid-nineteenth century on the basis of the postulated and highly problematic contradistinction between Aryan and Semitic families of peoples, cultures, and religions. This contradistinction grew from the Western discovery of Sanskrit and its relationship with European languages, at the time of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Together with the rise of scholarly Orientalism, this discovery offered new perspectives on the East, as a consequence of which the Near East was demoted from its traditional status as the locus of the Biblical revelations. This innovative work studies a central issue in the modern study of religion. Doing so, however, it emphasizes the new dualistic taxonomy of religions had major consequences and sheds new light on the roots of European attitudes to Jews and Muslims in the twentieth century, up to the present day.

This groundbreaking anthology provides the most comprehensive overview for understanding the fascinating relationship between religion and violence--historically, culturally, and in the contemporary world. Bringing together writings from scholarly and religious traditions, it is the first volume to unite primary sources--justifications for violence from religious texts, theologians, and activists--with invaluable essays by authoritative scholars.

The first half of the collection includes original source materials justifying violence from various religious perspectives: Hindu, Chinese, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. Showing that religious violence is found in every tradition, these sources include ancient texts and scriptures along with thoughtful essays from theologians wrestling with such issues as military protection and pacifism. The collection also includes the writings of modern-day activists involved in suicide bombings, attacks on abortion clinics, and nerve gas assaults. The book's second half features well-known thinkers reflecting on why religion and violence are so intimately related and includes excerpts from early social theorists such as Durkheim, Marx, and Freud, as well as contemporary thinkers who view the issue of religious violence from literary, anthropological, postcolonial, and feminist perspectives. The editors' brief introductions to each essay provide important historical and conceptual contexts and relate the readings to one another. The diversity of selections and their accessible length make this volume ideal for both students and general readers.

Henry Charles Lea's comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources. Lea was convinced that the Inquisition was not arbitrarily devised and implemented but was an inevitable consequence of forces that were dominant in thirteenth-century Christian society. In order to give as full a picture of the Inquisition as possible he examines the jurisprudence of the period. In Volume 1 he presents background information, giving a general account of the Catholic Church in the twelfth century and exploring the events that prompted the Church to set up the Inquisition. He explains the prevalent medieval understanding of the roles of the Church and government in society, and looks at medieval concepts of the relationships between individuals and the Church, the government, one another, and God. Lea shows how these views formed the basis of the Inquisition's structure, organization and processes.

This comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition by the influential American scholar Henry Charles Lea, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources, and adopted a rationalist approach that departed from the pious tone of earlier histories of the middle ages. Lea was convinced that the Inquisition was not arbitrarily devised and implemented but was an inevitable consequence of forces that were dominant in thirteenth-century Christian society. In Volume 2 Lea focuses mainly on the Inquisition in France, Iberia, Italy and Germany. He delves into the relationship between religion and State in the Languedoc region and describes how the University of Paris obstructed the Inquisition's activity. Lea notes that there was almost no Inquisition presence in Portugal, while in Italy sporadic popular opposition to the Inquisition was noticeable. He also explains how the Bohemian reformer John Huss fell victim to the Inquisition in Germany.

This comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition by the influential American scholar Henry Charles Lea, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources, and adopted a rationalist approach that departed from the pious tone of earlier histories of the middle ages. Lea was convinced that the Inquisition was not arbitrarily devised and implemented but was an inevitable consequence of forces that were dominant in thirteenth-century Christian society. In Volume 3 Lea focuses on particular aspects of the Inquisition. He considers the impact of the Inquisition on scholarship and intellectual life and on faith and culture, and describes how movements including the Franciscans and the Fraticelli gained prominence. He shows how the concept of political heresy was used by the Church and the State, and argues that belief in sorcery and witchcraft in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was stimulated by the Church authorities.

This is the first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. It is also the first study to examine Jewish life in the Northern Caucasus, a Soviet region that history scholars have rarely addressed. Drawing on a collection of family letters, Kiril Feferman provides a history of the Ginsburgs as they debate whether to evacuate their home of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and are eventually swept away by the Soviet-German War, the German invasion of Soviet Russia, and the Holocaust. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Soviet Union, presenting one Soviet region as an illustration of wartime social and media politics.

From 1618 to 1648 Christian princes waged the first pan-European war. Brought about in part by the entrenched passions of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the Thirty Years War inevitably drew in the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who stood at the vanguard of Catholic reform. This book investigates the Jesuits' role during the war at the four Catholic courts of Vienna, Munich, Paris and Madrid and the challenge to the Jesuit superior general in Rome to lead a truly international organisation through a period of rising international conflict. War goals varied and changed at the courts as the conflict progressed. Advocates of 'holy war' contended with moderates, or politiques. This book brings to light the extent to which the Thirty Years War was a religious war and it shows how ideas about the proper relationship between religion and politics shifted under the pressure of events.

After the rise of the Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIL), the world has been debating over an old issue, characterised by some as the clash of civilisations. Jihad, the Arabic term for struggle, was the target and Islamic terrorism and Islamic fascism became the popularised terms of the post-9/11 era. The following discourse has formed two theories attempting to define Islam and the role of Jihad in Islam. The first is that of the apologists that define Jihad as an internal struggle; the second sponsors the concept of offensive Jihad. In this book, existing theories are deconstructed to establish that there is no such thing as offensive Jihad or internal Jihad. Debunking both branches of political thought was possible using a cognition tool derived from the education system instituted by the Prophet Muhammad, the central figure of this controversy. The deconstruction is then followed up with an examination of an actual historical case, vis. the wars for Islam at the time of The Prophet as well as during the four rightly guided Caliphs. By doing so, this book systematically eliminates all confusion regarding Jihad. By addressing the fundamental premises involved in both sides of this controversy, the book develops an analytical tool that is free from dogmatic assertions and ensuing contradictions, eventually defining the significance of this analysis for a properly balanced understanding of Islamic foreign policy and Shariah law. A clear directive is produced in order to analyse any violence that takes place today and determine if the justification provided is Islamic or not.